Friday, July 16, 2010

Shortsightedness & Greed Killing Part of the Music Business?

It seems like issues that have plagued the music industry leaders, keep coming back to haunt them. Two financial revealings this week point to just that.

The first comes from the RIAA, which is essentially a lobbyist for the major record labels. It's no secret that they've been suing people who shared music over the Internet. Now it's no secret how much they spent on lawyers to do it in 2008. There's a document circulating that the sum is $16 million. TorrentFreak has an article on why the RIAA think it was worth the money even though they only received about $391,000 as a result of their lawsuits. Go figure. I see it as $16 million dollars to alienate your audience/consumers. Give them something they want, at a price point that makes sense and they will pay for it.

The other piece of news is concert promoter Live Nation announcing yesterday that tickets sales for the top 100 touring acts are down 12% in the first half of the year and they expect the numbers to be worse in the second half of this year. Per Encore: Executive Chairman Irving Azoff, who presented via video conference, chided investors for the sell-off.
"I'm hoping that what I'm seeing as all you guys e-mail back to your offices to dump the stock isn't indicative of the fact that we have a group of investors that are so shortsighted," Irving said.

In this case not only have ticket prices confused and angered ticket buyers, but now the chairman is chastising investors. Is this a house of cards waiting to fall? I don't think that will happen, but in order to prevent it, it seems like some serious rethinking/restructuring needs to take place.

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. There has got to be a trainer out there who will come in and show them how it's done.

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